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Today’s old standby prompt is to write for 10 minutes. Anything goes. “Give us your most unfiltered self.” Okay.

Cats are disposable. I realize the internet is teeming with almost as many photos and videos of cats as there are strays in this world. Who knew those prolific creatures would replicate in cyberspace as well? My delete button cannot keep up.

I grew up on a dairy farm. Cats were plentiful. If we didn’t have enough, some nice people from town would drop off their excess kittens near us (when nobody was looking). With so many around, and there being four pre-teen/teenage boys in the mix, sensitivity towards cats was lacking.

Sure, we had our favorites. They were granted house access where they could trip us, claw furniture, pee on the Christmas tree, chew power cords and speaker wires, and generally make a mess of things. Still, we loved some and tolerated more.

Part of having so many cats became the creativity in naming them all. We were a verbal bunch and had a tendency to make obvious naming choices. We would select a physical attribute and tie a name to the animal. Such as:

Bigfoot – A large male with extra toes on his front paws

Fish – A female stray (dropped off by some nice city folks we think) with stripes that looked a bit like fish scales

Goldfish – A son of Fish. Yellow tabby.

Stubby – An all black kitten who had the misfortune to get his tail stepped on by the horse. It broke about one inch from the base. The tail hung on for a few days looking like a broken antenna until it finally dropped away.

Pancake – Noticed when one of the dairy cows got up. Kitty hadn’t been quick enough when the cow went down. Nothing left to do but get a shovel… 🙁

Caterpillar – A long haired calico that did not remotely look like any caterpillar ever seen.

Speedy – Not truly a fast mover. A female very popular with the tomcats. She would stop for any of them. We lost count of how many litters she had.

I could go on but the timer is about to run out. Overall, I believe I restrained myself well in the time allotted.

🙂

Our ten-minute free-write is back! Have no mercy on your keyboard as you give us your most unfiltered self (feel free to edit later, or just publish as-is).